Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Brenda The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Isbel A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Zoooma This film is widely considered to be the very first American noir film. It's a B movie to be sure, with B list actors outside of star Peter Lorre. While he gets top billing, he's not the lead and barely has that much screen time. That is unfortunate because he is excellent in his performance. The plot is so thin and so simple yet the demure-in-stature 64-minute film packs so much into it. This was the director's debut and he only made two more films after this; he was not exactly a well-regarded part of the Hollywood machine... but he had vision, that's for sure -- there's a dream sequence that is very Hitchcockian, with use of shadows that's simply outstanding, separating this from all standard movie fare at the time. If you're a fan of film noir, this gem is not to be missed.--A Kat Pirate Screener

Claudio Carvalho The reporter Michael 'Mike' Ward (John McGuire) is promoted in the newspaper when he becomes the key witness of the murder trial of Joe Briggs (Elisha Cook Jr.), a young man that he had seen threatening the victim Nick in his coffee shop and then leaving the place with Nick with sliced neck. Joe swears innocence and despite the circumstantial evidence, he is convicted and sentenced to the electric chair. Mike's fiancée Jane (Margaret Tallichet) feels uncomfortable with the sentence and believes that Joe might be innocent. Mike loses his confidence and feels remorse for his testimony accusing Joe. One night, Mike brings Jane to his room and his nosy neighbor Albert Meng (Charles Halton) brings the landlord that expels Jane from the boarding house. Mike threatens Meng and later he sees a stranger with bulging eyes (Peter Lorre) on his floor that runs away from him. He has a weird nightmare and when he wakes up, he finds that Meng is murdered with sliced neck similar to Nick. Mike calls the police and is arrested as prime suspect of both murders. Jane seeks out the stranger on the streets to save her fiancé. "Stranger on the Third Floor" is considered the first film-noir of the cinema history. The story is engaging, supported by magnificent cinematography, and the sequence of Mike's nightmare is fantastic. Peter Lorre is creepy and the conclusion is naive on the present days. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "O Homem dos Olhos Esbugalhados" ("The Man with Bulging Eyes")

chaos-rampant Film noir has deep roots in Weimar Germany, and I don't mean the tricks with light and shadow, those being tricks. The engine was always control over the narrative and disoriented mind. It goes back to Lang, Sternberg, Pabst, selective films by primarily those three. I have written extensively on all three. But as far as the Hollywood model is concerned, the traditional iconography we identify as noir, it probably starts here. The Maltese Falcon and a score of other films would come out the next year.The score is that a murder has taken place, a young man arrested and awaiting trial, and our newspaper reporter is the key witness. He is quite adamant in the court that he's reporting truth, truth as he saw it. But of course he didn't see the actual murder take place. Nevertheless, the young man gets the chair.Now dramatically the entire thing is shoddy and wholly scripted from the outside, every character openly announcing love or doubt. But we lucked out that this was a b-movie filmed on the cheap, and so had to be quick and inventive, in place of a lot of words having to rely on a few strokes of the camera in just over 60 minutes.Our reporter is eaten inside by doubt that he helped convict the wrong man, and ordinarily we'd be taken on a plot where the tangled web is reasoned back into its rightful order. Instead we have amazing cinema, the widely discussed hallucination and centered in the house. Now most reviewers have rested their comments on the expressive sets and feverish air of the nightmare, as the man hallucinates himself in the situation of the convicted who is innocent but no one will believe him. It is the one scene that immediately calls for attention. But the nightmare has started well before he's fast asleep and is a little more intricately woven. The internal monologue of doubt and self-recrimination starts down in the street and goes up the lodging place, with the man pacing up and down the halls, no longer the confident person we first met, going through possible scenarios and his level involvement, and the stream of consciousness reflects shattered reality, coalescing from one unfinished thought into the one after next. It's the one thing perfectly written in this, whether intentionally or not.So the limits of a safe, recognizable world torn away, the eye no longer allowed to rest within a sensible geography, every little thing suddenly becomes a clue that triggers a story to fit in it. He sees a mysterious stranger on the third floor, the door opposite his.Then of course the nightmare on the third floor, the court, pointed fingers accusing, the huge cavernous cell with shadows of bars slanting on him.The third layer and more frightening is that he wakes up to discover that reality was just as dreamed. The uncanny effect produced by doubling the other two layers into now a straight-forward 'wrong man' plot, is it allows us to recast anxiety as spillover from both nightmare and monologue. This is very clever tinkering and especially at the b- level, every last bit of the film may be the mind in disarray and muttering to itself.Of course the story was all true as we suspected, both men innocent, and a 'crazy person' responsible. Everything is set straight. The twist is that it's the woman who acts as the private eye, doing the grassroots detective work on the streets. The court is spared a second trial, fateful causality taking care of loose ends. The denouement of a happy life ahead of everyone is like straight from a dream, which is fitting since the premise was that reality was just as dreamed.Subsequent filmmakers would supply a more ambiguously layered eye, but this was great for the time, an impressive start.

Bartholomeu Wrathbone Hey, looking for a good black and white movie? Check this one out. This is a nice suspenseful love story that you will not regret sitting down to watch. There are a lot of old black and white movies that have lost their luster over the years and would probably not be able to entertain today's audience. But take my word for it. I am a college teen that loves having fun goofing off and playing video games and yet I managed to actually enjoy this aged film. The characters are very well played. You can easily fall in love with the 2 main protagonist which is very vital in this type of film. I cared about their relationship. I wanted them to live happily ever after. I wanted them just to live! I won't give away the story I promise because you should really watch this yourself. The story is not only engaging but has you anticipating each scene as it plays. The filming techniques are superb and seem to be the most appropriate position for each shot. No thriller is complete without music. And this movie has just the touch needed to add that extra filler in the background to keep you on your toes. The sound quality is actually not that bad considering how old of a movie it is.The ongoing lesson or moral of the story is well represented and portrayed. There really is nothing bad about this movie. It has Peter Lorre in it for heaven's sake. If you don't know who that is then watch this movie just to find out. You'll love him. He is classic in this movie. Overall this is just a great movie that you should sit down with your family one night and watch together. I would watch it again right now if I wasn't in college.